Creative Team Engagement and Leadership Development

How Elon Musk manages his time

Elon Musk is not only bold and creative but highly disciplined and focused on his Vision. How does one man send rockets into space, revolutionise transportation, develop kick-ass solar roof tiles and re-invent the Hyperloop? He must be either a workaholic or a master of time management. It turns out he is a bit of both.

Here are his three main success secrets…

1. Disrupt your status quo

“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better,” “I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”

How often do you challenge yourself? Are you curious enough? If you are not sure, think about how you react when someone gives you negative feedback….are you grateful, or defensive?

2. The devil is in the detail

“I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can,” says Musk. “It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree – make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details, or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”

How much time do you spend in meetings so that you are ‘up to speed’, ‘in the loop’ – are you on information overload?

3. Visualise and commit to what is important

“I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future,” he said. “If we can solve sustainable energy and be well on our way to becoming a multi-planetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planet—to cope with a worst-case scenario happening and extinguishing human consciousness—then,” and here he paused for a moment, “I think that would be really good.”

Do you have a personal and/or a leadership vision? – What does it look like? Who knows about it? Is it informing your decision about where you spend your time?

It is great to have words for your Vision, but images are 400% more powerful than words in terms of retention.

On the wall near Elon Musk’s cubicle at SpaceX, you’ll find two giant posters. On one poster you’ll find an image of Mars, very much like it appears today – a cold and barren planet. On the other poster, you’ll find an image of Mars that is completely transformed, ready to become a new home to humankind. It’s the before and after shots of the work Elon Musk intends to complete before his time on this earth is up.